I live in Le Claire, Iowa which is right on the bank of the Mississippi River where Interstate 80 crosses to Illinois. This takes place about 2003 give or take a year or two. My wife and I were on our way to Davenport, Iowa to do some shopping and were driving on I-80 when we saw a car and trailer on the side of the Interstate. It was obvious that he had a flat tire on the right side of his small trailer. The man appeared to be by himself and was standing next to the trailer looking at the tire. Usually I don’t stop for hitchhikers or people broke down when my wife is with me because I had a scare a few years before with my son in the car. That’s a story for another time.

As we approached his car I asked my wife if she minded if I stop. She felt he looked safe enough and just was having a problem. We stopped and I walked back to see if I could help. He was in a bad way. Not only did he have a flat tire he had damaged his wheel before he could stop when the tire blew. He didn’t have a spare so not only did he need a tire he needed a wheel which can be much harder to find. We weren’t in a hurry that day so we figured we would take him up to Blain’s Farm and Fleet, get a tire and wheel and he would be on his way.

Farm and Fleet was about eight or ten miles up the road so that would be no big delay. We loaded his tire and wheel in my trunk and off we went. I was very surprised when Farm and Fleet didn’t have that size wheel. OK. Not a problem. There are a number of tire retailers nearby so off we went. After we checked out two or three of them we still didn’t have a tire. In the last one we stopped at, they recommended that I go to Quad-Cities Wheel (I think that was the name) and told me how to get there. Off we went and after a little driving around searching for the right place I found them stuck away behind some other business’ near the river. They had just what he needed and after a little delay we had his new tire and wheel and were on our way back to his car.

During the time we spent together I got his story. If I remember right he was from Indiana or Ohio and was on his way to Montana where his son was building a house. He was on his way out to help him. He had his trailer very full of used lumber and tools to use when he got there. The lumber looked pretty bad but if that’s what he wanted to use it was of no business of mine. We got the new wheel on his trailer and he asked what he owed me. I told him that when I was nineteen years old and hitchhiking across the country an Air Force Sergeant did me a good turn and when I asked him the same question he told me to just pass it on and that is what I was doing. Then I asked him to pass it on to someone else that needed help. He said he certainly would and he was on his way to Montana.

All in all it took us about three or four hours and we probably drove close to fifty miles. That was a good day. I had some interesting conversation and helped someone at the same time. I’m not recommending that anyone stops for hitchhikers or people broke down along the road. That is a decision you have to make. I will say that if you keep your eyes and your heart open the Good Lord will show you ways to help other people. That is what the “Pay It Forward” movement is all about. If you haven’t heard about “Pay It Forward” and haven’t seen the movie you really should read my earlier story.

That reminds me of another story that happened near the same spot on the Interstate. My wife and I were heading East on our way home from Davenport when we saw a young man standing next to his car on the side of the Interstate. I didn’t know him but he had local license on so we stopped. He was on his way to work and had a flat tire. He had a spare but no lug wrench so he couldn’t change it. I got mine out but it was the wrong size. OK, we’ll head for my house and get something that should work. We got back to his car, found a wrench that would fit and gave it a try. No luck. His lug nuts weren’t about to come loose. He decided that he would hitchhike on in to work and come back and get it later.

I gave him a ride to work, about 20 miles one way, and when he offered to pay me as soon as he could I told him the same story I mentioned above. I’m just passing it on to you and when you have a chance, pass it on to someone else. He said that he most certainly would and I went on home and didn’t give it much thought. A few days later a lady I used to work with called on the phone and thanked me for helping her son. She told me that she would join in and pass on some help whenever she had the chance. I got two “Pass It Forwards” going with one kindness to someone I didn’t know.

Since I’m in the mood for writing and you are in the mood to do some reading let me tell you one last story.

A couple of years after the above stories I was driving home by myself and just before I got to the rest area on I-80 I saw a car on the side of the road. I wasn’t in a hurry so I stopped and offered some assistance. The young man standing next to the car turned out to be from Korea and was on his way to Chicago to visit a friend. I’m not sure where he started at but I think it was the West Coast. He spoke very little English but with a lot of hand waving and pointing we made ourselves understood.

He was driving a rental car and wanted to put his spare on but he didn’t know how. He wanted to know if the “little” spare tire would be OK to drive to Chicago. It was one of those small spare tires that you shouldn’t drive over 50 mph and only for short distances. I told him it wouldn’t but we could get it on and get him down to the rest area where we could talk a little safer than next to the Interstate.

When we arrived at the rest area I offered to take him to get a tire if he wanted. Before we left to get the tire I checked them all for air pressure. The one that was flat was blown and the other three had over 60 psi in each. No wonder the tire blew. It was near 90 degrees and he had been pushing his car pretty hard. I told him that was way to much air and let some out to get to the pressure they should be. I showed him how to read the tire gauge and the readings on the tire. If I understood him correctly he said he had stopped for gas and the tires looked low so he just put air in until the look right. I explained that these should look kind of low since they are radial tires.

He was very happy to hear I was willing to help him and off we went to find a tire. We went to “Tires Plus” and got in line. It took about two and a half hours to get the new tire so we went in K-Mart and I helped him buy a tire gauge and he enjoyed just looking around. When the tire was ready we returned to the rest area and I showed him how to put the new tire on. When I was in my car and getting ready to go he reached for my hand. I thought he wanted to shake hands so I stuck it out the window. He took my hand and touched the back of it to his forehead about three times and said a bunch of thing in Korean. There was no way for me to explain “Pay It Forward” so I didn’t even try. I am sure that he had a very good impression of good old Iowa hospitality and told his family when he got back to Korea. Kind of made me feel good also.

You have a Great Day and I’ll see you along the road.

Bob Jones

Bob Jones

Please remember while woodworking of any kind to wear a dust mask and follow safety guidelines for all of your equipment.

First and most important, NEVER use your only copy of a pattern. It may be difficult or impossible to replace it. Mark your original pattern with a "RED X" so you will always remember which is the original. Photo copies of photo copies will degrade after a few cycles. If you mark the original in RED you will always know which is the original. Make photo copies to cut up and don’t forget, you can enlarge or shrink a pattern on a copy machine. It you are making something that requires a close fit such as putting a clock in some of the small clock patterns, make sure the clock will fit before you cut the pattern. I can never remember the formula and have to figure it out each time but, there is a pretty simple straight forward formula you can use to determine how much larger or smaller (percent wise) you need to enter into the copy machine to get your desired size. And don’t forget you can enlarge onto two pieces of paper to make really large patterns.

Here are the steps I use to get good results. This is for fairly thick wood. Remember if you are cutting thin stock you can use spray glue, double sided tape, or even just masking tape to hold a stack of them together and cut 4 or 5 at once.

1. Sand the wood to about 220 grit. (You can omit this step if using plywood).

2. Remove all sanding grit from the surface. Lacquer thinner works very well for this but you can just wipe the surface with a dry cloth or blow off with a air hose. The cleaner the surface the better the pattern will stick.

3. Apply the pattern to the front using the cheapest spray glue you can get. Only put the glue on the pattern. Do not put it on the wood also as this makes the pattern very hard to get off when you are done.

4. Apply plain heavy paper to the bottom of the piece. This reduces chip out on the back.

5. Drill the pilot holes. You should drill these as large as possible to make it easier to get the blade through. Don’t drill the edge of the hole to close to the cutting line as sometimes this will cause break out on the back of the wood.

6. After all the holes are drilled you are ready to cut. Try to stay on the lines but if you get off the line ease back to the line in a gentle movement and it won’t be as noticeable. For sharp outside points that have scrap wood past the end of the point just cut past the end of the point, make a little loop, cut the other side. This will give you the sharpest point. For inside points sometimes you can cut in from both directions without costing you to much time. However, if that isn’t practicable and you have scrap wood next to the line, cut to the point, back up a little, rotate your wood keeping the teeth toward the scrap wood, and back the blade into the point. Turn the wood to bring the teeth facing along the line to be cut and finish the cut. This takes some practice.

7. Double check to make sure ALL of the cuts have been made.

8. Blow as much of the saw dust off as you can.

9. Remove the pattern. A hair dryer or heat gun make this very easy but don’t get to much heat on the wood.

10. Wipe the surface with a rag soaked in lacquer thinner to get the glue off then rinse the whole piece with lacquer thinner to get glue stains out of the cuts.

11. If it isn’t to delicate, finish sand to remove most of the burrs on the back.

12. Remove the burrs with small files or pieces of sandpaper.

13. Apply what ever finish you want. I use Deft spray which is a lacquer and does an excellent job. Lacquer seems to bring out the depth of the color. I also use Danish Oil finish for that "real wood" look that allows you to touch the wood not the lacquer.

I would like to tell you about a fun and profitable time my wife and I had at a Geocaching event. This one was called a “Cache-In-Trash-Out”. It was at a large city in Central Iowa and was a bit of a drive for us as we live in extreme Eastern Iowa. I had never been to one before and it sounded like fun. A Geocaching club in that area had made arrangements to clean up a piece of land that was officially a park but had never been developed. It was right next to a shopping mall. The plan was to get a number of people together, clean it up and then later place a Geocache in it.

I had planned to go but my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife had other plans and was going to stay home. Knowing that I wasn’t in any shape to be bending over all day picking up junk off the ground I made a broom handle with a nail in the end so I could stab the paper and other junk to pick it up. Since my wife wasn’t sure what she was going to do I made one for her also.

It was a bright shining morning and I was getting ready to go and when she changed her mind and started getting ready. We were on our way to try something new and hopefully going to have some fun along with the work. Upon arriving we were welcomed by a great bunch of men, women and even a few teenagers. I am not a group type of person and at first felt like a fish out of water but soon the friendliness of the group loosened me up. After a while when everyone that was coming should have been there the person in charge explained what he wanted to do and why.

The park, and I use the term very loosely, was a long L shaped piece of ground with a creek running through it lengthwise. Being next to a mall parking lot you can imagine how much junk there was. The bags were passed out and everyone went their own way. My wife and I separated and I headed for the creek as I had knee high boots on and most of the people didn’t. My wife decided to work her way along the parking lot and street where there was what looked like a truck full of paper and trash. That was the last I saw of her for hours. I was up and down hills, in and out of the creek and fighting my way through all kinds of brush. Doesn’t even sound like fun, but it was. I was meeting all kinds of people that had the same interest as me and I was having a great time. Along with the trash I managed to find a few useful items which I kept. Most people would have called them junk but treasure is in the eye of the finder . The only thing I can remember of the “Treasure” I found that day was a pretty nice kitchen knife and a couple of pretty marbles but there was more. I just don’t remember what they were. Maybe they weren’t such a treasure after all if I can’t remember what they were. What do you think? Anyway, toward the end of the day I was finally working within sight of my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife and I could see that she was starting to wear out. About that time there was a little excitement when someone found some “Real Treasure”. They found a dollar bill. Darn, if I would have been just a little sooner, maybe it could have been me. A short time later I happened to look at my wife and I saw her bend over, pick something up and stuff it in her glove. I knew that look. She had found something and was very pleased with herself. I know because it is the look she gets when she finds a “Lucky Penny” or “Lucky Nickel”.

At the end of the day there were refreshments (there were cold drinks all day) and a few drawings for prizes. We were two of the lucky ones. My wife won a “T” shirt and I won a very nice battery charger for AA batteries, which is just what my GPS uses. It is the type of battery charger that can be plugged into the car power outlet or into the wall. Great, I was VERY happy with myself. The only thing that bothered me just a little was my wife was still wearing her gloves. Strange. Oh well, no big thing. She probably doesn’t want to lose her nickel and she doesn’t have a pocket to put it in. Hmmmmmmm.

View Photo Album

Well, the day is over and after comparing GPS’s with some folks, talking about who knows what and in general just relaxing we headed for the car. I thought my wife was going to explode by the time we got to the car. She ripped off her glove and I saw it was more than the usual penny or nickel. It was paper. So, she had found a dollar. That ought to make her happy for a long time. Then she handed it to me. It wasn’t a dollar. It was a fifty dollar bill. She told me it had been all crumpled up and was just laying there. I was shocked. She was the person that wasn’t going to come with me. I asked her why she didn’t tell everyone what she had found. I thought her answer was great. She said “That other lady was so happy she had found a dollar, I didn’t want to ruin it for her.” What could I say? She had done exactly the right thing, in my way of seeing it. This way everyone was happy.

I haven’t been to a CITO since and I got too busy to even do much Geocaching for a couple of years. When it gets warm I’m going to try to spend more time having fun and less time on my addiction, Computers, so I plan to have some new stories to tell you about the Great and Wonderful Sport of Geocaching. I have a few more stories from the past that I will work in once in a while so if you are interested in Geocaching, stop back and see what’s going on.

I hope you have a Great Day
Bob Jones

I wasn’t smart enough to look at the Difficulty and Terrain values so I almost bit off more than we could chew. At the time I was only 60 years old, just a kid yet, and I asked a friend of mine, Dick who must have been about 70 years old, if he would like to go find a Geocache. After I explained what a Geocache was he thought it sounded like fun so off the three of us went.

The Samurai Cat has been archived so I won’t worry about hiding the location in the photos. The three of us started out and headed for “Wildcat Den” state park which must be about 30 miles South of our home. It is a rugged park with some roads and paths winding through it. All in all it is a beautiful place to visit so we were bound to have a fun day even if we didn’t find the Samurai Cat.

On arriving at the park we drove around and around trying to find a parking lot close to the location our GPS was pointing to and finally decided on one on top of a hill. We started out on a path that didn’t look to steep and away we went. I was in the lead with my GPS held firmly so it wouldn’t have a chance to escape and leave us to the mercies of the Iowa wilds where we might be lost forever. After all, the park covers a full 417 acres. (Joking of course) My Beautiful and Usually Charming wife was next with Dick protecting our rear from whatever Wild animals might be in the area. Of course that was for my wife’s benefit since she is a city girl from Germany and the woods aren’t her favorite playground.

After winding down steep paths, over logs, across bridges and a few other minor obstacles we found it necessary to leave the path. I wasn’t sure just what I was doing so I “cheated” and had printed off the additional hints but had them covered by folding the paper. It was now time to cheat because the trees were so thick my GPS was pointing in different directions depending on where I stood. OK, lets cheat. First we were told to follow the low trail toward the “Devil’s Punch Bowl”. Well that didn’t do us much good since we hadn’t started on the Low Trail and I had no idea what a “Devil’s Punch Bowl” was. Next hint was to follow the creek to the left at a bridge. OK here’s a bridge and there is a creek. Their left is my right. Sounds good to me.

About now is the time for my Lovely wife to decide that she didn’t like fighting her way through the weeds and stickers. Soooooo, “Honey, I think I’ll just stay here and wait for you.” she said. I told her it was fine with me but I wasn’t sure I would be coming back this way (which we didn’t) so does she know the way back. She was sure she did so Dick and I climbed down off the bridge and started up the creek. We hadn’t gotten over five steps and I heard her yell. “Bob, are there really any Wildcats in this park?”. Now this was a real opportunity I couldn’t pass up. As you may have guessed, I have a rather interesting sense of humor. Of course my reply was “No Sweetheart, I don’t think they have seen any wildcats down here in four or five years. I think I may have heard that a bear was sited a month or two ago.” and I started walking on up the creek. I hadn’t gone over three paces and I heard the brush crashing behind me. Yep, you guessed it, Pulltabs had decided to go with us.

The next hint was to take the left fork a short way up the creek and find a “bowl/waterfall that isn’t on the normal tour”. That little waterfall made the trip worth while. It wasn’t very big but for this area it was beautiful. OK, we had found the waterfall and now had to look for two trees that had fallen from the top of the left embankment and follow those dead trees up the hill “they point to a standing tree with the cache at the base”. That sounds easy. Let’s look for a dead tree that fell over the bank. There’s one, and another and another and another. Ya, sure, pick two trees. Well there were two close together so now all we have to do is hire a mountain climbing team to get us up there. I’m telling you it was very steep. To make matters worse, Dick walks with a bad limp from an accident when he was very young. We, Dick and I, not only have to get up the hill ourselves but we have to figure a way to get Pulltabs up the hill. Off we go. I didn’t tell Dick but I got WAY over to the side so when he came tumbling down I wouldn’t get caught in the landslide. Veronika started up last and picked her own path, Dick was in the center and I was off to the right. Good thing Dick and I were out of her way because Pulltabs wasn’t about to be last one up the hill. You would have thought she was part mountain goat the way that gal can climb. She was first to the top and Dick came in a close second with me trailing way back. That was embarrassing.

Now that we are at the top I am sure that my GPS is going to lead me right to it. It’s right over there, no, there, no back the other way. The trees were really thick. While I was stumbling around trying to do it right the other two were just searching the old fashioned way. You guessed it. Veronika almost walked right up to it. “Look what I found.” she proudly said with that “I did good” smile of hers. Hurray, WE had found a real Geocache. Took a couple of photos and took a string of “Tibetan Beads” and left some polished Montana agates, a Gold colored dollar coin (everyone likes to find Gold in a treasure) and some change. After we put the cache back where it was, Pulltabs found it so she got to put it back, we tried to find an easier way back down.

View Photo Album

We came to the far edge of the hill. It was really a long oval shaped hill with very steep sides all the way around so it didn’t make much difference where we went down. Dick found a place where there didn’t seem to be as much brush so we chose that. Veronika and I started down and when I looked back I saw Dick sit down and push off. You would have thought he was on a sled. Down the hill he went on the seat of his pants. He flew past us and was at the bottom in no time. Looked good to me so off I went. Veronika had a little more dignity, or more likely she didn’t want to have to remove the grass stains from the seat of her pant, so she climbed down. The rest of the trip back to the car was easy.

When we got back to the car Veronika said “There aren’t REALLY any bears or wildcats down here are there!” I told her “No, but didn’t you have fun?” and she agreed she did. We were now real Geocachers.

Bob Jones

I was somewhat surprised by the wide variety of shed plans that were available on the internet. I had never given it much thought before. Once I started looking it was more of a "What’s best" than "where are they". I stored the information away and a few days later we sat down and I showed him which shed plans I thought he should consider. Later it crossed my mind there may be other people looking for shed plans also, so I will provide what I found.

First let’s have a little fun and watch "Build A Shed In 10 Minutes". I have a feeling that it would take me a little longer than that.

Now that we have seen how professionals do it, let’s take a look at some of the shed plans that I found. At first thought I was going to write a review of each one. Then I decided what I find interesting may be different than what you are looking for. Therefore, probably the best way for you to make a decision is to check out their sites since their descriptions are a lot more detailed than what I would write. Check out the ones I list below and see what meets your needs.

Let’s start off with something FREE. At "My Shed Plans" you can download a FREE shed plan. It is located at the bottom of their page. Or you can buy 12,000 (yes, I said 12,000) shed plans & woodworking patterns for a very reasonable price. Here’s what they say about their product.

"My Shed Plan is a complete guide that explains how you can build a beautiful shed from scratch. Ryan Henderson the writer of the book has given detailed blueprints and step by step instructions that even a beginner can follow. Shed builders can choose from 12,000 shed plans and woodworking patterns.

Once you sign up you will receive the entire package instantly in the Members’ Area via downloads. There are easy to follow instructions provided in the members’ area just in case you have never downloaded anything from the internet before. After making the purchase you will get all the shed plans and woodworking blueprints within 5 minutes. This means that you get the product for a lower price as there are no shipping costs. However, if you prefer buying the CD then you can buy that and it will be sent to you via mail.

Woodworking can be time consuming but making the right plans takes even longer. My Shed Plans Elite provide you a wide range of design to choose from and once you have the design you will be able to construct your shed nicely and it will take less amount of time to build it. It keeps all things simple. The aim of My Shed Plans is to make woodworking a fun activity for you. Once you follow Ryan Henderson’s instructions making shed will be a less time consuming and more fun thing to do.

Some of the plans include a Garden bench, How to Build a Fence, Dog Kennel, Making an Easy Arbor,”, Swing Pet, Nursery Wagon, Doghouse Plans, Outdoor Fireplaces, Feed Cart, Storage Shed for Pesticide and a lot more."

Next let’s take a look at "Teds Woodworking". He has 16,000 woodworking plans plus a lot of bonus offers. The bonus offers include a DWG/CAD plan viewer, 150 woodworking videos and complete woodworking guides. Of course this is a variety of woodworking projects, not just shed plans but what a deal!

If you just want shed plans take a look at "Shed Building 101". They have 41 Shed Plans and Free Do-It-Yourself Building Guides at a very reasonable price. On their site you can see what the building will look like and when you click on it you will see the floor plan. That’s pretty nice.

41 Shed Plans and Free Do-It-Yourself Building Guides

"Shed Plans And Designs" have 12,500 Highly Professional Shed And Woodworking Plans. It appears that there is no end to what they have to offer. While you are there check out their video "How You Can Quite Easily Build A Typical BackYard Shed In One Afternoon…"

Get INSTANT ACCESS To12,500+ Highly Professional Shed And Woodworking Plans!

Of all the sites I found, these are the ones I showed to my friend and recommend that he check out. Most of them include all types of woodworking plans and they all have a large number of shed plans. I’m sure if you check them all out you will find a lot of interesting ideas and will certainly find just what you are looking for. After you get your shed plans and complete your project, please stop back here and leave a comment letting us know what you bought and how your shed came out.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bob Jones

In conclusion, I’m not sure why the writer of the Tweet-Retweet-Post plugin would put a hidden link to that site in his/her plugin but I sure don’t like things being sneaked into my site. I won’t use it again and thought the rest of you should know about it. If you use that plugin check for the white block and please add a comment to let me know if you have the same issue.
Bob Jones

1. Look for a web host that provides unlimited site bandwidth. This is very important for your websites future. I can’t think of anything worse that having a site that is thrust into the attention of the world only to have your web host shut you down because you exceed your bandwidth.

2. Also look for unlimited domains. No one knows the future. You may decide to set up another website or blog about something different and want a new site just for that. You don’t want to have to pay extra for each site you want to build.

3. Unlimited hosting space is important also. When you add your new site and start adding things like high resolution photos, and the many other items you want to make available to the people that visit, you don’t want to run low on space. Of course if you have one of the "Cheap" webhost they will be glad to provide you with more space, for a price. Unlimited hosting space is very important when you want to start building additional sites.

4. Check if the web host provider provides a free domain name and the cost to set up additional domain names in case you decide to branch out. Adding the cost of domain names can increase your yearly cost very fast.

5. If you have a website that you want to move to a new web hosting company make sure you get free domain transfer. This will not apply to many of you. For those of you that do have a website up you want to check this cost closely.

6. Look for a web host that provides ample Email accounts. Make sure they provide both POP and Imap Email accounts. While this isn’t as important as many of the things above, it is something to consider. My web host, Hostmonster, provides unlimited POP and Imap Email accounts.

7. Look for a web hosting provider that has "cPanel" as the means for you to control and make changes to your site and web space. In my opinion this is a great feature that works behind the scene allowing you to make all the necessary changes to your site and maintain your web space. Hostmonster has a demo of the cPanel so you can look around and see how it works.

8. You may not need them at first but make sure that all the nice to have things like bulletin board, mailing lists, polls, surveys and much more are available to you for free. Time will come when you will want some of these features on your site and this may be the best way to get them.

9. If you plan to put up a WordPress blog you will want a web host that provides the latest version of it with a quick and easy installation process. Along with this you will want to make sure that they provide many other free programs for installation such as Site Builder, templates and many other features that you may someday want to give a try. Remember, don’t just think of what you want today. Think of what you may want or need three or four years from now. You don’t want to have to change web hosting companies to get them or do without.

10. Also look for free site promotions that are provided by the web host. Such things as a Yahoo or Google credit can help to get you on your way to a profitable venture.

11. You also want a web host that has a very high network uptime guarantee. People can’t visit your blog or website if the host has a lot of down time.

12. I saved one of the VERY IMPORTANT items for last. Make sure that the web host you select has great support. You want the support crew to be from your own country so they speak your language as their first language. Not with an accent so heavy you have to guess at what they are saying. Hostmonster’s support people are in Utah. You want both live telephone conversations and live internet chat capabilities with the support personnel. Sometimes a live chat is even better than a telephone conversation. The advantage is you don’t have to take notes. You can simply save the chat when you are done and you have a record of all the instructions. A forum is also an important type of support that you want to make sure you have.

As you can guess, I believe that Hostmonster is the best web host available. They have everything that I have listed above. Everything. Their support personnel is the best I have ever encountered for any company of any kind. I never have to wait for over a minute or two to talk to someone that I can actually understand. They have always been able to resolve my problems in a timely manner. Usually they can correct my problem while I’m on the telephone with them.

In summery you can see there are a lot of things to consider when looking for a web host provider. Monthly price is only one of them and not necessarily the most important. At the time of this writing Hostmonster has a special promotion of $5.95 per month. Their normal price it $6.95 which is a very low cost for all they provide.

I hope this has provided you with something to consider during you selection of a web hosting provider. If it has, I have accomplished what I have set out to do. Thank you for your time.

Have A Great Day
Bob Jones

A few years ago I was trying to think of a way I could help others get the correct information for people that had lived in this area. One of the requirements would be to supply them with a copy of the actual records. You know how things go, the important ones get put off and the fun stuff gets done. I’m no different, until about three years ago. About three year ago I decided to locate the records for the cemeteries in Le Claire, Iowa (the town I live in) and put them on the internet along with documenting photographs. That was a lot easier said than done, let me tell you.

I decided to do the main cemetery in Le Claire first. This was a very big undertaking for a first time project. There were about 2,558 people buried in Glendale and for a first timer that was almost overwhelming. The first problem that arose was the fact that cemetery records (at least Glendale’s did) have private and personnel data in the records so I couldn’t just photo them and stick them on the internet. The people in charge of the cemetery were supportive and very helpful (I want to take this opportunity to “Thank” them again) and allowed me to take photographs providing that I kept them for use in compiling the data but not to release to the public. What do I do now? I want some kind of proof of the information so people that find it on the internet can rely on the information I provide and use it as a “source” with a high value. Why not photograph the headstones and put the photos with the records? Sounds like a good idea to me. That’s what I’ll do. That posed a lot of problems to and I’ll get into them as we go along. Right now I want to stick with the Glendale Cemetery records.

The next problem was the fact that there were at least three types of records depending on how far you go back. The original data, going back into the early to mid 1800’s, was hand written of course. This had been painstakingly transferred to file cards and the person, or people, who performed this job did an excellent job. However, typos are bound to happen. And they did. Not many but one is bad if it is on the person you are researching. At a later date someone put the data into a book form for easy use. The typo problem is bound to pop up again and it did in a few cases. I want to say here and now that the work performed by the people keeping the records was outstanding and I am in no way faulting the work they did. I have no doubt that I could never come near their quality with a typewriter. Thank God for computers and data files.

In this part I’ll tell you the process we went through to compile the data, clean and photograph the headstones and monuments, and check my data file.

First let me tell you something my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife found very funny. I am one of those rather impatient (some would say obnoxious) people that wants things done my way and fast. Sometimes I create BIG problems for myself when I let this poor behavior flaw come to the front without thinking about the consequences. The first day out to take photos we were trying to develop a system that would speed things up so we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives out there. Let me tell you, at that time that cemetery looked awfully big. Anyway, things weren’t going like I wanted them to. We tried a lot of different systems but nothing seemed to be as fast as I wanted it to be. I THOUGHT I could probably do it as least as fast by myself, so why have my wife spend her time out there to. The problem is my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife likes to help whenever she can. I had to convince her that I didn’t really NEED her to spend her days in the cemetery with me.

After a couple of hours we went back to the house, which is only about 12 blocks away, to get something to eat and drink. It was really hot that day. While there I convinced her she was probably just wasting her time and could do more productive things at home in a much cooler place. She finally agreed and off I went. BIG MISTAKE. About then I started finding headstones that needed a lot of cleaning before the photo could be taken. I had to lay the camera, clipboard and a couple of other things down, get the brush out and clean the stone. This usually required me to get down on the ground and crawl around to get at the stone. Get up and put the brush back in my pocket, bend over to get the camera and clipboard. Then take the photo, go to the next headstone and start all over again. Up and down and up and down … Boy I wish my Beautiful and ALWAYS Charming wife was back with me now. That night I kind of hinted that I sure had a workout today and sure missssssed her. The next morning there she was getting ready to go help. LOVE THAT GAL. Of course I had to eat a little crow for a day or two but that’s OK, she was there to help.

Cleaning the headstones was the hard part. My Lovely wife did most of that. She would work hard and get far enough ahead of me that I never had to slow down for her. Thank You Darling. At that time she was using a soft bristle “whisk” broom like you use to sweep a car floor with. She was doing it dry and it was very difficult to get the stones clean. After a short while we discovered that two brooms and a milk container full of water and a little liquid laundry soap worked the best. She would remove most of the loose dirt, moss and other junk with a dry broom and then use the wet broom to clean the stone. This seems to work the best. About then we also found that the water made a BIG difference on the photos of some of the stones. The smooth surface marble stones with the letters removed were often hard to photo because of glare off the smooth polished surface. When you get them wet the letters really show up very well as does all the beautiful designs etched in the surface. The sandstone stones also showed a big difference when they were wet. It was such an improvement I started carrying a jug of water and broom with me just to wet the surface if I was having problems getting a good photo.

So, my wife was out in front of me cleaning stones. Let me say here, that is a tough job. Not only did she have to get up and down continually, but it was really hard on her shoulders and back. The motion to clean the stones really caused her some problems. After many chiropractor appointments she’s OK now but it was tough on her. I am going to have to find an easier way to do it this year. I have been told that there is a spray can of something that is made just to clean headstones with. I have to save my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife as much work as I can this year or I may find myself doing it alone again. Perish the thought.

NOTE; Since then a friend of mine has provided a can of the spray for me to try (I don’t remember what it’s name was). I have found that plain old soap and water worked as good or better than the spray can.

On with the story. My wife has cleaned the stone so I have the easy part. I’m using a Canon eos Digital Rebel XTi camera and it takes very high resolution photos. All I had to do was to compare the information on the headstone to my data printout, take the photos and record the numbers so I could match the photos with the correct name later. In many cases I would think the headstone or monument may be a little hard to read because of wear, glare or poor lighting so I would take a number of shots from different angles. Sometimes the angle of the photo makes a big difference in what detail you can see. After I got home I didn’t do any photo editing on the photos except to rotate them to get the right side up when I had held the camera on it’s side. I feel this gives the people that want to download it the best thing to work with if they want to enhance it with their software.

Let me say so there is no doubt in anyone’s mind; The photographs of the headstones and monuments are not copyrighted. You can use them in your records or on your website as you see fit. If you use them on a website or for any commercial purpose I would appreciate it if you would give me credit for the photo and link them to my site at www.RobertsAdventure.com/ .

That’s about it. I have uploaded the photos and data files to my website to make it easy to locate photos of the headstones. Including all four (and half of another) cemeteries we did last year (2007) I took about 5,500 photos. That’s a lot of photos. (I’m now up over 8,000 photos).

Compiling The Data

A point of interest to some of you would be a little of the "Trivia" associated with that cemetery. The oldest recorded burial in Glendale Cemetery was Malinda Chamberlin in 1835. The person with the earliest recorded date of birth was Judith Danforth who was born in 1778. There are about 2558 people buried in the Glendale Cemetery. I thought this was interesting; there is one animal officially buried in the Glendale Cemetery. It was Waltimore Rathmann’s dog. It is listed as buried in the plot next to him. Waltimore lived from 8/3/1858 to 9/18/1944.

Now, on with the indexing of the Glendale Cemetery. I had found at least three types of records in the cemetery; the old records (which I didn’t use) the typed file cards and the compiled book. The first process was kind of easy (when compared to the rest) and I simply used one of their books which I scanned into my computer and used an OCR (optical character recognition) program to convert it to a Excel 2003 file. Now came the work. OCR programs do a good, but not perfect, job so I compared person by person, line by line, the Excel file to the original book. That took days. When that was done I made arrangements to photograph the file cards. That process only took a day and I want to thank the people at the Le Claire Glendale Cemetery for allowing me to do so. Those photographs are not for public use and are only being used by me to compile and check records. I will not supply a copy to anyone so don’t ask.

Now for the REAL work. I compared each card to my compiled Excel file. The file cards added a little more information and answered a few questions. That took over a week to complete. The process isn’t complete yet. Why? I still haven’t caught any errors that may have occurred when the original records were written. How am I going to catch those errors? Yep, compare them to the headstones and monuments in the cemetery. That’s next.

Now for the photographs. I got a plot map from the cemetery office and scanned it into my computer. Then, using that as a start I redrew the plot map to the same scale. That was a couple of days to complete. You can find the plot map, with the other records on the Cemeteries page if you’re interested. Using the plot map we, my Beautiful and Usually Charming Wife and I, set out for the cemetery. We started at one corner of a section (there are three sections in the Glendale Cemetery) and worked our way through the entire cemetery cleaning and photographing the headstones and monuments. As we completed a plot we marked it off the map to insure we took photos of them all. I’ll cover the work and problems involved it taking the photos in the next post.

Before I took the photos (yes, photos, I took more than one angle on many of the stones) of a headstone or monument I checked the information on the stone against the data file I had made. Did I find errors? You bet. Probably mostly mine but probably a few typos from when the file cards were made. The order of acceptance that I used was; first the cemetery book, if the file cards were different I considered the file cards correct as they were earlier than the book and most accurate of all was the headstones and monuments. They were considered as the "official" source for my data. As I took the photos the photo number for each headstone or monument was recorded on the data file printout. It took a couple of weeks to process the whole cemetery and it was VERY hot.

After we had worked our way through the whole cemetery I was VERY happy to return to my beautiful and caring computers, C-3PO, R2D2 and LapDancer. I made the corrections to the Excel file. Was I done? Not by a long way. I still had to make sure that I caught any errors I had made when I was writing in the cemetery. It was hot, I was tired, I almost certainly made errors. Yep, I did. So, in a much nicer environment, I sat down and compared each photo to the Excel file data. I found some errors. One thing Great about working with the photos is if they are at a high resolution you can enlarge them and see things you can’t see when you look at the stone.

While comparing the photos I also updated the data file to include the photo numbers for each person so I could later link the photo to it on the web.

I was done at last. I put the data file (as a graphics file) and the photos on Webshots.com for people to see and use. I’ll leave them there until I need the space for something else. I can take them down now since I have them, and much more, on this site. I also gave a copy of the data file and photograph to the Le Claire Cemetery, the Genealogy and Historical Society of Le Claire Township, the Family History Center (LDS) in Davenport, Iowa and the Davenport Library Genealogy section.

The other “Old” cemeteries we did.

in this part I’ll tell you about some of the other small “Old” cemeteries we did in 2008.

After we completed the Glendale Cemetery I decided to do the same thing to some of the small cemeteries in this area. To start with there are two more in Le Claire, Iowa and two in Argo which is about five miles west of us. I decided to start with the two in Argo since I have some ancestors in one of them.

The two cemeteries in Argo, Iowa are the “Argo Cemetery” and the “Le Claire Prairie Cemetery”. Both are very old. The Le Claire Prairie Cemetery was started March 22, 1887. It is right in the town of Argo and got its name for the original church, The Le Claire Prairie Church, that was across the street. (Note; this is about the only place you will find the original name of this church.) It is now the “Our Savior Presbyterian Church”. I’m not sure when the Argo Cemetery began because I haven’t been able to find the records for it. The person that had them died and at this time no one seems to know where they are. This means that no one else can be buried there since they don’t have a record of what plots have been used.

The clerk for the Le Claire Township was very helpful and allowed me to photograph the records for the Le Claire Prairie Cemetery. He should have also had the Argo Cemetery records but as I stated above they weren’t anywhere to be found. I hope when the person that had them died the people that went through his belonging didn’t burn them. The clerk for the Township also had the records for the Fairview Cemetery in Le Claire. I photographed those also. The records for both cemeteries were hand written and the original records. There was also a plot map for the Fairview Cemetery.

Basically I did the same process for these cemeteries as I did in the Glendale Cemetery in Le Claire. I used the photos of the records to create an Excel data file (I couldn’t scan them and use the OCR program I talked about in part 1 because they were hand written). Actually I found a data file on the internet that I used as a base line for the Le Claire Prairie Cemetery. I also found one for the Jacks Cemetery. If I couldn’t verify the data in the downloaded data file with the photographs of the headstones, I didn’t use it. Then I took the data file to the cemetery and went through them from one end to the other. These are very small cemeteries and it only took about a day to photograph each one. After I got all the data and photographs completed I put them on the web at Webshots.com and later at my website at www.rm-jones.com. All the records and photographs for these three cemeteries are posted on this site including the plot map for the Fairview Cemetery. While talking about that let me tell you what is actually there. On my Cemeteries page you will find the cemetery records in various formats. First you will find the Excel 2003 file so you can download it and sort data as you want. If you don’t have Excel there is a link to http://www.openoffice.org where you can get a excellent alternative to MS Office. There is also a PDF file of the records for those that prefer a PDF version. The plot maps for the Glendale and Fairview cemeteries are also there as .JPG files so you can download them and print them on a full size sheet of paper.

If you go to my Cemeteries page and look at the photos you will see that some of the headstones and monuments in the Argo and Fairview cemeteries have fallen down. Other than that the cemeteries are in very good condition. I found it interesting that in the Fairview Cemetery there was a headstone or two that were hand made by someone and they either misspelled names or ran out of space and had to make smaller and smaller letters as they went along. Very interesting stones.

There is one more cemetery in Le Claire that we did. It is the “Jacks Cemetery” which is just North of town. It is larger than the other three small cemeteries but not as large as the Glendale. I found the official records and have completed it also. It is included with the rest on my sites.

What are my plans for this year (2009)? Well, there are a number of small cemeteries in this area so I plan to do them. I can think of three in Princeton, Iowa which is five miles North of us. One of them is VERY hard to find and VERY old. There is an ancient cemetery about 25 miles South of us that I find very interesting. The sign says it is the resting place of the first white settlers in Muscatine County. The stones are very hard to read and hard to photograph.

Also, I plan to start Geocaching again and roaming around taking photos. I’ll try to make this Blog as interesting for you as I can so please stop back from time to time. Leave me a comment letting me know what you are interested in and if I have any experience in it I’ll try to touch on it from time to time.

Have a Great Day
Bob Jones